Perry’s Ad Marks Beginning of Air War

On this day — Rick Perry’s first campaign ads hit the airwaves in Iowa; analysis and reaction to Perry’s 20/20 new tax plan; could Occupy Wall Street do for Democrats what the Tea Party did for Republicans; and President Obama continues his swing through western states as he looks to shore up his base of Hispanic support.

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The Ads Wars Begin

After a month of bad polling numbers and several bad debate performances, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has launched the first volley in the Republican air wars with the first televised campaign ad of the election season. In it, Perry touts his job creation record in Texas and promises to create more than 2 million jobs across the country by loosening regulations on energy production and environmental regulations.

Unlike some of the slickly produced Web ads put out by his campaign, this video seems downright B-grade in terms of its production values, complete with all the usual cliches you would expect in traditional campaign advertising like the syrupy music, bold blue text over a gray screen as b-roll of coal trucks and oil wells plays in the background.

With his poll numbers languishing in single digits in early-primary states, including South Carolina, Perry is hoping his “Cut, Balance, Grow” plan will wrench the spotlight from his poor debate performances and from rival Herman Cain’s flashy 9-9-9 flat tax plan. Cain now leads several polls.

At the heart of his plan is a 20 percent flat tax on individuals and corporations, well below the top marginal rates of 35 percent. In perhaps its most unusual feature, Perry’s plan would allow individual taxpayers to choose whether to pay the flat tax or keep their current income tax rate.

The plan was dismissed by some economists as unworkable, but praised by anti-tax activist groups.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Perry’s plan was panned by both conservative and liberal economists who found the plan confounding and unworkable.

Basically, Perry is giving every taxpayer something. If your taxes are lower under the current plan, that’s fine. It they’re lower under his flat tax (as they would be for many higher-income Americans), that’s good, too.

It’s likely why Steve Forbes, the flat tax guru who helped Perry write his plan, called it a “win-win.”

Except there appears to be one clear loser: the federal government. Viard says Perry’s plan appears engineered to deprive the government of significant revenue. “It’s a starve-the-beast mentality,” he said.

To many conservatives, that’s the point. But Viard points out that it’s possible that Perry’s plan would produce even less revenue than 18% of the gross domestic product, which is the level at which Perry wants to cap federal spending. (Herman Cain‘s 9-9-9 tax plan, by contrast, is close to being “revenue-neutral,” Viard said.)

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Economic Anger

While the CBS News/New York Times poll released yesterday shows that the majority of Americans approve of how President Obama is handling the nation’s foreign policy, only 35 percent think he’s doing a good job when it comes to the economy and job creation.

Republicans are looking to ride that anger to a White House victory in 2012 and President Obama has been campaigning across the country trying to allay that anger by: promoting his new jobs program (that’s stuck in Congress), his efforts to ease the impact of the economic crisis with executive orders (which have limited reach), and blaming the Republicans for turning what would normally be rather bipartisan proposals to stimulate the economy into a partisan football.

Today, the New York Times reports that the president’s tour of the west takes him to Denver where he will lay out a series of initiatives that he hope will ease the impact of student loans on new college graduates.

At a press briefing Tuesday afternoon, Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council, said the president would use his executive authority to expand the existing income-based repayment program with a “Pay as You Earn” option that would allow graduates to pay 10 percent of their discretionary income for 20 years and have the rest of their federal student loan debt forgiven. That plan would start next year.

Most of the 450,000 low-income student-loan borrowers currently enrolled in income-based payment must pay 15 percent of their discretionary income for 25 years before having their debt forgiven, although terms are easier for those in public service.

The lower caps of the new program were scheduled to go into effect for new borrowers in 2014, but, Ms. Barnes said, “because we know the frustration of crushing loan burdens, we have to act now.”

Hoping to shore up his standing, the Obama campaign has launched a massive push to rally the Latino vote. The project was on full display Monday — in a fundraising event at the home of actors Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, but also in a brief meeting with a Latino family in a Las Vegas subdivision.

Obama’s motorcade took him to the modest stucco house where Lissette and Jose Bonilla live with their three children.

Both were undocumented immigrants who later became citizens. Photographers were briefly allowed in to capture Obama’s conversation with the couple. The three sat around a small dining room table. Obama, suit jacket off, listened and softly asked questions about their lives, chin propped against his hand.

That was the photo the press got, and no doubt the photo Team Obama wanted. A small moment in a long day of travel and speeches; the president listening patiently to a Latino family talk about their struggles and aspirations.

Obama also stopped by “The Tonight Show” before departing Los Angeles for a conversation with Jay Leno to talk about Iraq, the economy and his Republican rivals. The Washington Post has a wrap-up of the president’s appearance on Conan’s old show (oh yes, I just went there).

In the survey, 56 percent of all respondents and about half of the most conservative Republicans and independents expressed unfavorable impressions of the 9-9-9 plan. By comparison, respondents were about evenly divided on the idea of a flat tax; among conservative Republicans and independents, however, nearly three-quarters said they view the idea positively. Presidential campaigns understand that economic proposals are about more than numbers and fine print. Voters look to them to get a sense of a candidate’s values and priorities.

“To me, the best economic plans are narratives,” said Columbia Business School Dean R. Glenn Hubbard, who was a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush and who is backing Romney in the 2012 race. “They tell the voters whether the candidate understands how the economy works and how they would approach it.”

Of course, people can disagree in good faith over the right way to address a genuine crisis, and congressional Republicans stepped up to the plate earlier this month with an alternative package they call the Jobs Through Growth Act. The moniker seems designed at least partially to exploit the news media’s tendency to look for balance and objectivity in all things, as though to place the Democrats’ jobs act and the Republicans’ jobs act on equivalent pedestals.

But did the Republicans propose a jobs act in the sense of a package of near-term demand-creating initiatives, as opposed to shibboleths and ideological dog whistles? Some economists think not. Joel Prakken, a former economist at the New York Federal Reserve Bank who is chairman of St. Louis-based consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers, said that if the entire package were enacted immediately, “we wouldn’t change our estimates of economic growth.”

That’s assuming Congress skipped one big element of the GOP plan, which is enactment of a balanced budget amendment. If that got passed during this period of economic strain, he said, “it would be catastrophic.”

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Programming Note: The First Word will be on vacation until next Wednesday. Have a safe weekend everyone.